Greeks

Euripides 
Sophocles

Greek mystery cults developed the idea of an afterlife and combined with the mythology of Dionysus to create the popular religion of christianity which combined a likeable god with the clever trick of hiding his false promises in the afterlife.

Cynicism grew out the ground cleared by the satirists. It was an anti-civilisation philosophy. The very work means dog-like. And while the its abstract ideas had wide appeal only hardcore philosopher types like Diogenes implemented the ideas. This was enough him one of the most famous people in greece though.

Religion

Once Erectus had filled the earth it was forced to start competing with itself. The winner of this competition was obviously us and we flatter ourselves by imagining it’s because we are smarter. But our brains were actually smaller than some other species like neanderthal. Our trick was that we evolved a polymorphic brain. 19/20 sapiens come out and the womb and imitate those around us religiously. We don’t ask why we just do. It’s been shown by experiment that modern chimps are more thoughtful than modern humans. But counter intuitively that is why we are so much smarter. When sapiens started copying the previous generation it created a new type of thing. Culture. And through natural selection culture could evolve. But not just through natural selection. Because of the polymorphic brain some sapiens had their curiosity switched on and these people serve the role that sex plays in natural selection. They add variation into the culture and when they discover a positive mutation the rest of the tribe would patch their software with the new update. This enabled a faster rate of evolution than biology alone because it had a higher rate of transmission. Having sex with a fire making monkey doesn’t necessarily mean your kids will be able to make fire because only one parent has the mutation. And it enables multiple mutations within one generation. Having sex with the fire making monkey and the rock sharpening monkey will at best give your kids one of those abilities but more likely neither. While cultural evolution enables both you and your kids to gain both abilities with a 100% chance of transmission. It’s important note here that nowhere here have we become smarter per se. The role of the 1/20 was not to be the smart member or the tribe. They were invariably morons. Their role was simply to explore the possibility space. No more. Thinking was something that one lucky idiot invented much later and learning to think is what transforms the curious idiot into at least a demigenius. With the trick of cultural evolution humans quickly became more powerful than any other animal on the planet including close relatives like neanderthals. And we reconquered existing hunting ranges and even began to expand our hunting ranges onto the ocean and into colder northern climates

Plato

Plato developed his idea of utopia as a technocratic communist society. With homosexuality outlawed as counter-reproductive. And usury seen as exploitation of the poor by the rich. He also drew upon the poorly kept secrets from the mystery religions to include ideas like heaven and hell and since his works are among the most widely circulated of his era made sure these idea were passed on for later philosophers to pick up on.

Zeno Zeno developed stoicism which believes that while gods exist it’s absurd to think that they are anything like us or are at all interested in us. He therefore, argued that it was up to us to control the world by acting virtuously. But since nature acts according to its own will we shouldn’t assign its acts, benevolent or malevolent, to ourselves. As long as we act rightly we should be happy.

Honour vs Individualism

Epicurus Epicurus developed epicureanism which fleshed out the idea that senses are all that there is. And since senses are subject the illusions we should not aim ultimate truth and instead trust that our subjective experience is gods will. He equites following one’s nose with following god.

Greeks values individual intelligence while the romans valued individual honour. Honour cultures enable collaboration because honour can be fulfilled by performing one’s role well as part of a machine. However, since honour can be fulfilled by simply repeating the life of one’s father more perfectly honour cultures tend to stagnate unless new ideas are constantly stirred in. The romans being at the centre of the Mediterranean world and sharing some greek heritage were perfectly situated to receive this admixture. The result was the most powerful empire ever seen. However, when Greece lost it’s vitality Rome was only able to animate it body and not it’s mind. When Greece died it lived on in Italy as a zombie until the renaissance. Japan serves as an example of what Rome would have been if the Italian peninsula was moved into the pacific and thereby separated from the vitality of Greek culture. Japan too is an honour culture and interestingly both arrived at seppuku as the most honourable way to die. And both used and saw an extremely honourable death as a way of making up for any irrecoverable dishonour suffered in life. Japan like Rome settled on feudalism from civil war when not stimulated by the conquest of external ideas or territories. And Japan like Rome showed the power of mixing an honour culture with fresh ideas when industrial shipping changed the temporal geometry of globe and allowed fresh ideas to be mixed into the country against its will. Within 10 years of being shown muskets Japan becomes the leading manufacturer of them. Likewise with textiles, then automobiles and later computers Japan would take ideas from the outside world and in return show the world how to make them. And like Rome they used the this new power to rapidly conquer the world. Unfortunately for the Japanese the Americans were not yet demoralised like the greeks and they demonstrated to history what an individualistic society can do when just enough nationalism is stirred in.

So Epicurus argued we should follow the god in our head, while Zeno argued we should learn to control the gods in our heads. Once they learned to control themselves it was easy for them to control others and the epicureans became the subjects of stoics through the intermediary of their own heads